We’re talking about queer friendship, and the ways it can be expansive, affirming, and enriching in a world that teaches us to prioritize romantic monogamy over everything else. Turns out, it’s gay to be friends.
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Evan mentions the book "The Other Significant Others." You can find it here: https://bookshop.org/a/83912/9781250280916
(There's also a nod to "Ace" by Angela Chen, which you can find here: https://bookshop.org/a/83912/9780807014738)
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[00:00:00] Welcome to The Bi Pod, a podcast about all things bisexual. I'm Evan and my pronouns are they and them.
[00:00:06] And I'm Christina. My pronouns are she and her. We welcome anyone who has any kind of relationship
[00:00:12] with or curiosity about queerness. The Bi Pod is an ad-free community supported podcast. You can
[00:00:17] support us for as little as two dollars a month. To join the community or get more information
[00:00:22] about the podcast visit patreon.com slash The Bi Pod. This podcast is one piece of the long
[00:00:28] history of bisexual and queer discourse. We don't know everything at all. We're here to be part of
[00:00:34] the conversation. Let's get into it. Hi Christina. Hi Evan. Happy big gay friendship day.
[00:00:58] Happy big gay friendship day. I like to think of all of our episodes like holidays, like a theme,
[00:01:04] you know? Yeah. This is sort of a continuation or a companion piece to our episode from earlier
[00:01:15] this season about complicated friend-shuationships. Yeah. A term that you have coined.
[00:01:22] But we're talking about specifically queer friendship and a little bit more about like how
[00:01:30] we approach friendship now that we are, we have some more life experience and some more tools.
[00:01:37] Yes and the way that queerness and friendship are related to each other or how they can
[00:01:44] inform each other. Yeah. Excited to get into it. So I thought we would start with just like a
[00:01:52] really easy softball question like we love to do on this show. What do we want out of friendship?
[00:02:02] Like what are you looking for? I know I'm the one that sort of like introduced this prompt.
[00:02:08] You texted it to me on like a random Tuesday.
[00:02:13] But I'm like man why did I do that? This is rude. Perhaps I will give a little context
[00:02:22] for the listeners about where this, the idea of this question came from. So earlier this
[00:02:30] year I read Ace by Angela Chen which is a book about asexuality. Highly recommend it.
[00:02:36] I'm so glad you read it because we've been recommending it on the show for a long time.
[00:02:41] Yeah we always disclose like we haven't read this but it's considered you know whatever.
[00:02:47] And it just brings up a lot of really interesting questions about sex and
[00:02:57] what do we want out of sex? What do we want out of relationships? What's the
[00:03:01] relationship between sex and relationships? And so I read that and that like brought up a lot of
[00:03:08] things. And then I'm currently reading The Other Significant Others which is a book about
[00:03:14] friendship. And The Other Significant Others makes reference to Ace specifically. The
[00:03:21] extended universe. I know. Specifically one of the, because The Other Significant Others
[00:03:28] includes a lot of, it has like interviews with people who have like significant friendships
[00:03:34] about those relationships. And one of the people that they talked to read Ace and
[00:03:44] makes reference to it in that like what Ace brought up for them was the question of what
[00:03:52] does sex mean to you? And what do you want out of sex? Because in our culture that's like not
[00:04:01] really interrogated. It's just sex is a normal thing that everyone's supposed to want.
[00:04:10] But also men are really supposed to want it and women are only supposed to want it
[00:04:15] sometimes. And when they want it, it's supposed to be for emotional reasons. And men are only
[00:04:19] supposed to want sex for physical reasons. And there's all this gender cultural baggage.
[00:04:24] If you're not a man or a woman, good luck.
[00:04:27] Yeah. And none of, it doesn't have anything to do with individual experience.
[00:04:39] And for some people sex is primarily a pathway to intimacy. And for some people
[00:04:45] sex is about a physical interaction or experience. And there's like all kinds of layers.
[00:04:53] And I was like, wow, so smart, so great. So then once I had started thinking about that
[00:05:01] with sex, then I was like, oh man, you could ask that question about everything.
[00:05:07] And the whole world crumbles in around you.
[00:05:16] So I encourage you to think about the question of as it applies to sex, what does sex mean to
[00:05:22] you? What do you want to get out of sex? We had a very interesting offline conversation about it.
[00:05:27] But then I wanted to parlay that into friendship.
[00:05:39] I think also because it is more common, although still I think under explored,
[00:05:48] to think about what do you want out of a romantic relationship?
[00:05:53] Definitely.
[00:05:55] But I don't know that I've ever heard anyone talk about what they want out of a friendship.
[00:06:02] I mean, maybe like in passing, but not like in a really thought out or articulated way of like,
[00:06:08] this is what I'm looking for in friends.
[00:06:11] Yeah, I think that's very true. Like even on dating apps, it'll be like,
[00:06:14] what are you looking for? And that could be like, what kind of relationship or what,
[00:06:18] you know, whatever. I think we like under explored, but still a lot more practiced
[00:06:24] in thinking about and articulating that. Like what are we looking for in a romantic partner?
[00:06:30] What are we looking for in a romantic relationship? But because of like the
[00:06:35] fluidity of friendship and also like the devaluing of friendship in our society,
[00:06:43] I think that we like generally approach friendship a lot more casually,
[00:06:48] which just doesn't leave as much space to think about those things. But I think it's important
[00:06:52] because like relationships of all kinds are very important to us. Especially a friendship
[00:06:58] is important too. Yeah. I guess also because in romantic relationships, the cultural norm is
[00:07:09] people are operating under the assumption that monogamy is being practiced, in which case you
[00:07:15] just have to answer that question like the one time. And it might change, you know, between
[00:07:20] phases of life, but you just, it's just like one relationship, whereas you can have
[00:07:30] a theoretically unlimited number of friends and you may be, the answer might be different,
[00:07:37] which is part of why this is a difficult question to answer.
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